INTERVIEW: 'We haven’t programmed the lads to be like robots' says Tipp U20 boss Cummins after scrappy win over the Kingdom

Winning is the most important outcome of any game and that was the message from Tipperary U20 hurling manager Brendan Cummins in the aftermath of his side's victory over Kerry in Round 1 of the Munster championship last Wednesday evening.

Cummins and his team coach Fintan O’Connor are more familiar with the talent in Kerry than most outsiders, and will have had a fair idea of the challenge that faced them driving down the road on Wednesday evening, especially with the tough conditions which greeted them ahead of the game.

“Myself and Fintan were acutely aware coming down here how good Kerry are, and this team in the Celtic Challenge three years ago won out their division,” Cummins highlighted.

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“We knew that the lads in charge would have them well prepared and that is exactly what we got. We told the lads coming down that we would need to be patient, that we would need to out-work Kerry.

“I was delighted with the lads' composure against the wind. Around 15 or 16 minutes in, after Jason (O’Dwyer) pulled off the save that the wheels could come off the wagon. But they stuck with it and in that second quarter we turned the game and I felt it was very positive the way the lads reacted,” he added.

Kerry were very cute in the first half of the game, and refused to allow Tipperary easy access to possession, pushing right up on the full back line for the puckouts, which meant the Premier had to go long for the majority of the first half restarts and struggled to get hands on ball as a result.

“In fairness to Kerry, they were well prepared. They pushed up on the puckout and didn’t give us the short option and didn’t make it easy for us to run the ball up the pitch, so we had to go long.

“We went long then and eventually got the hang of winning the long puckouts, and once we id we got a bit of a foothold, and in the second half when Kerry were against the wind they worked the ball really well up the pitch and we couldn’t really pull clear of them until we eventually got the second goal,” Cummins said.

There was a litany of basic handling errors, with first touches going astray, hand passes not going in front of the runner, and a number of throws penalised by Waterford referee Nicholas O’Toole, but Cummins refused to criticise the teams and highlighted the sheer difficulty of hurling in such dire conditions.

“If you were standing in the middle of the field you’d have been blown over!”, he quipped.

“In fairness to both sets of players, the conditions out there were terrible. And if you look at the way both teams played, no one lashed the ball up the field. Everyone had the bravery to run it because the players have the character to do it, and it reflected the way the game is gone.

“I’d give the teams great credit for that, and look, there will be mistakes because when you’re trying, you’re going to make mistakes and we don’t mind that.

“We wanted the lads to keep working the ball because a lot of teams with the advantage of the wind can end up just lamping it down the pitch, and we didn’t want to do that. We have a set of values and a gameplan where we’re trying to work the ball, and in fairness we did. 

“If it goes wrong, so be it, you just have to stay with it and go again because they are a young group of players and we need to trust them and back them. We’ve seen an awful lot of them in January since we got together so we’ll be happy leaving Kerry getting the result we wanted and we’ll look forward to Waterford now.”

A first competitive outing of the year was never going to deliver the finished article, and perhaps the game against the Kingdom will prove ideal preparation for a much stiffer test against a very promising Waterford side who travel to FBD Semple Stadium next Wednesday for the Tipp’s final group game, with a semi-final almost certainly guaranteed regardless of the result.

“It was about getting the cobwebs out of the system too,” the Ballybacon Grange man suggested.

“We started the game very nervously and we had a feeling that that was the way it might be, because the lads have put in so much effort you can sometimes overdo it and tighten up.

“But hopefully the game under the belt will stand to us and we just need to prepare again for Waterford. They’re going to be a serious, serious challenge. They’re senior team is absolutely flying it, and as we know, when your flagship team is going well it trickles down to the rest of the teams.

“Tonight's win will hopefully put us into a Munster semi-final on the 27th, and if we can get over Waterford it’ll give us home advantage, so there’s a huge incentive, there’s no doubt about it. 

“We are trying to set up a game plan, but you just want to find a way to win too. We haven’t looked to programme the lads like robots, we just say to them do whatever you can to win and don’t hit the ball away as best you can and that’s what we’re trying to instil,” he finished.

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